


Those That Favor Fire

by boredealis



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Kidnapping, M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 11:52:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17487557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boredealis/pseuds/boredealis
Summary: After pulling Captain America from the water, the Winter Soldier is lost and adrift. He learns of Tony Stark—the man with the dark, lost eyes, the eyes of a killer. A man who would know the Soldier's soul. What else could the Soldier do, but take him?





	Those That Favor Fire

**Author's Note:**

> AU starting after CA: TWS. In case you are asking, no, I do not know where I am going with this. Most of the tags will apply to later chapters, not specifically to this one. I will note beforehand when a chapter will include rape, sexual assault, or kidnapping. This one will not.

With the snow howling all around, the Winter Soldier danced with the Black Widow. It was a part of their training, his training, so he was told. He could wield the weapons they gifted him, he could stare down the scope of a rifle, he could hide the glint of moonlight on his knives. What he did not know, before her, was the meaning of grace. The Widow moved like the world was already hers, like the floors she walked were her stage and the screams were her applause. This, he knew, was from dance. She learned from misdirection and trick and showmanship. So, he danced with her, and slid grace and poise and beauty into his toolbelt along with all the rest.

The driving snow fell on panting lips and dissolved on overheated skin. The dance, like the wars he’d fought, was a battle from within. Their bodies would touch, and fall apart, and come back together, magnetic. They did not fight each other, but themselves. Close enough to touch until the hand was snatched back, a fight between the wanting body and the raging mind—

_Howard once spoke to him of Maria. The beautiful woman with the bright eyes, the dark hair, the dancing Italian on her tongue. He’d loved her, as much as he could love anyone._

_His Handlers had worried, some, when they sent him after the Starks. He could tell, from the whispered Russian and the side-eyed looks. They need not have worried. A part of him remembered, buried deep, but the Mission was the Mission and the living were to become the dead, and this was not new to him._

_When he wrapped his hand around her neck, it was his first human contact in years. The warmth from her skin sunk deep. But he was the Winter Soldier, and would not have become what he was if he could be tempted by warmth. Yet, when she died under him, when her boiling skin finally began to cool, a part of him wanted to chase it to its end._

_Howard lay dead. Like a dog. What was it like, how did it feel, to let another person make you so weak?_

—and he’d thought, from that dance, from that life they’d once suffered through together, that the Widow had understood him. She knew what it was to kill. She knew what it was to kill, and let it change you, rot you. He’d even thought, perhaps, that the woman was his soulmate. That the minute their lips finally met, at the end of the dance they’d done with each other for decades, he would feel that rising spark within.

He fought her. Once, for a target. His handlers spit her name. A traitor, a bitch, a whore. Next, he fought her for the life of a man, the Captain, they called him. Her thighs wrapped around his neck and it was almost like they had begun to dance again, her red hair and glinting green eyes a homecoming.

Of course, he lost. Of course, he kept losing. Of course, the minute hesitations he had made for the loving ghosts lurking in his memories ended up costing him.

As he dragged the drowning Captain from the water, he realized just what his dance with the Widow was. Another trick. Another deception. He’d looked into her eyes, and did not see the rising dark as he once had. No, the Widow did not deal in honest, brutal death. She lurked in deep shadows and used love and red lipstick as her weapons. She lived in dishonesty. She was whatever the person she was with needed her to be. Not an evil force, nor a malevolent one. She was as they trained her to be, a survivor, a graceful pirouette and a nimble knife in the back. And, now, she belonged to Captain America.

He slammed their book shut. He had other problems.

_I’m with you…to the end of the line._

A roaring train. A scream. The driving cold.

He left the Smithsonian with more questions than answers. He thought, perhaps, that Bucky Barnes still lived within him. That he had been the man that had fought alongside Steve Rogers for truth, justice, and the American way. He knew, from the look on the man’s face and the stubborn set of his jaw, that Steve Rogers would not settle for anything less than the man he’d lost.

He couldn’t…think. He needed to think.

Prying Hydra out of him took time. He tried to return to them, several times, before stopping himself. It was a familiar feeling, like climbing on a bike or turning off the safety, and he knew, then, just how long he’d been at war. How long he would continue to be at war.

He needed more.

He looked for the traces of Steve. He didn’t have to look far. The aliens pouring into the city, Captain America swinging his shield, green monsters and mayhem and aliens and cubes and portals and bright, bright glowing lights and suddenly he couldn’t look because the light was familiar and far away but cold somehow and he knew—

He panted, bent over the screen at the library. Attracting curious looks. The Soldier wrested control back from himself. Subtlety was necessary. Essential. He forced himself to look at the screen. The video of the Avengers struggling to fight the aliens. The video of a small, shining object, flying up toward the portal.

It came to him, then. The man in the glinting, gleaming, red and gold suit. The glowing white eyes.

Tony Stark.

The Soldier had heard the name. It nagged at him. A target, maybe, that he had failed to kill. He read on, determined to figure out the reason behind the familiarity. In this world, such familiarity was dangerous. And, through the Internet, he learned much about Tony Stark, the man whose parents the Soldier had slaughtered. He was ostentatious. Loose-lipped. Egotistical. Immoral. Alcoholic. Bright and brash and, in many ways, the opposite of Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanov. For a moment, staring at the hundreds of photos and articles about the man, the Soldier would have thought Tony Stark the opposite of himself, as well.

The Soldier was no fool, however.

One photo struck him. The man had returned from a kidnapping in Afghanistan, a cast on his arm. Weapons dealer…kidnapping was to be expected. The Ten Rings, the Soldier recognized as well—Hydra had never bothered with them, they were sloppy and impatient. Their annihilation came as no surprise.

The video of the man. Dark hair, dark eyes. And a look in those eyes, deep and piercing, which the Soldier had come to know well. He saw it stare back at him in the mirror, in windows. The gears of shadow, clicking and moving behind his eyes. This was a man who knew death. This was a man that had let it touch him, change him, rot him down to his soul. And this was a man who, after realizing it, carved himself to pieces to reach that festering core.

But the Soldier knew, and Stark, he believed, knew, that there was no exorcism for the ailment they suffered from. The Merchant of Death and the Winter Soldier, titles they may drop, but would never be able to run from. Tony Stark may wear the colors of fire, may burn with the heat that Maria had within her. But fire and ice are not enemies. They are both companions in destruction.

His flesh fingers reached out. A bare inch from the screen, where Stark’s smiling face and haunted eyes looked back at him. So close, yet so far away. Something within him, deep within him, ached, ached like he never had for Natasha Romanov. And in that moment, he knew.

He would have him.


End file.
